DivaPalooza – Recap

Divapalooza Wows Rosemary Clausen Center’s Audience

by Christine Wiese

The Rosemary Clausen Center for the Performing Arts got baptized last Saturday. It wasn’t your ritual sprinkling of water from the font at the front of the church nor the explosive baptism by fire on the war front. It was more like total immersion in wave after wave of music. The audience barely came up for air from one song when they were bowled over by another.

If the buzz at intermission was any indication, Divapalooza had the crowd wowed. One woman was overheard to say, “It was like ‘The Year of the Woman’ up there!”. And so it was – from the pulsating opening set of “I’m a Woman” to the final flourish of “It’s Raining Men”. The women in the audience never had it so good.

That’s not to say their male counterparts didn’t enjoy themselves. Quite the contrary. One guy said the young one (Janelle Lauer) was his favorite. “Leonard Cohen must have had her voice in mind when he wrote ‘Hallelujah’!”. It’s true; she was great but so were the other two divas. Jane Pini took Janis Joplin’s screamer and gave it back to the universe with a roar and Lynne Rothtock’s rollicking “Bigger Is Better” pretty much brought down the house. Then there was “Proud Mary” ala Tina Turner with some amazing fret work and soul pounding bass.

These ladies and their band obviously love what they do and their talent covers a multitude of musical styles. They treated us to blues, rock, Bluegrass, and Broadway – all gloriously mixed together and melded into one heck of a show.

It was a premier beginning for a premier venue. Hats off to the Galva-Holstein Foundation for their initial dream and their years of hard work which brought that dream to fruition. It was an epic grand opening.

The Foundation has presented the community with a first class theatre. There doesn’t appear to be a bad seat in the house and the acoustics are marvelous. People can see, hear, and stretch out their legs. Plus the seats are soft! What more could a theatre goer ask for than to just settle in and enjoy a great show?